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The difficult plight of writers living under authoritarian rule has been well-documented over decades, with some enduring impossibly harsh treatment for their truth-telling and resistance to repression. Frequent targets to be silenced through arrest, torture, prison and even death, writers, says Karin Deutsch Karlekar of Pen America, “are paying a very heavy price for free expression, which of course is not a crime.”

In the face of authoritarian resurgence around the world, PEN America's Freedom to Write Index documents cases of writers and public intellectuals who have been unjustly locked up for their exercise of free expression. At least 277 of them (in 36 countries) were in jail last year.

An alarming follow-up to the February 2021 Myanmar coup d'état: Yangon moves into PEN America's Top 10 Freedom to Write Index offenders.

Myanmar writers this year feature prominently in PEN America’s annual Freedom to Write Index, providing a count of the writers and public intellectuals who were held in prison or detention during 2021 in relation to their writing or for otherwise exercising their free expression.

An alarming follow-up to the February 2021 Myanmar coup d'état: Yangon moves into the Top 10 Freedom to Write Index offenders.